1. Field
The present disclosure relates to techniques for communicating optical signals. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to an optical source for a set of optical signals that includes a set of semiconductor-optical amplifiers (SOAs) whose power consumption dominates the total power consumption of the optical source.
2. Related Art
Silicon photonics is a promising technology that can provide large communication bandwidth, low latency and low power consumption for inter-chip and intra-chip connections. In the last few years, significant progress has been made in developing low-cost components for use in inter-chip and intra-chip silicon-photonic connections, including: high-bandwidth efficient silicon modulators, low-loss optical waveguides, wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) components, and high-speed CMOS optical-waveguide photodetectors. However, a suitable low-cost WDM optical source, such as a multi-wavelength laser source, remains a challenge and poses an obstacle to implementing WDM silicon-photonic links.
For example, existing WDM lasers (such as those used to transmit optical signals in WDM telecommunications systems) are usually very expensive, transmit a single wavelength and typically have high power consumption (on the order of a few percent of wall-plug efficiency, which is defined as the coupled-out laser power divided by the total consumed electrical power). Because future WDM silicon-photonic links are expected to include thousands of optical channels (or more), which each consume around 1 mW of optical power, the power consumption, size and cost of the WDM laser sources is likely to be prohibitive and may offset the advantages of WDM silicon-photonic links.
Hence, what is needed is an optical source without the above-described problems.